Design

Oracle's Cloud Resource Model API

By Adrian Bridgwater, November 04, 2010

Oracle's commitment to open standards showing some substance

In a move designed to help highlight the company's claim to a commitment to open standards, Oracle has announced the Oracle Cloud Resource Model Application Programming Interface (Oracle Cloud API) for managing cloud computing infrastructures.

The company claims that this news represents a delivery on its commitment to providing complete, open, and integrated cloud computing offerings. The Oracle Cloud Elemental Resource Model API is a subset of the Oracle Cloud API and has been presented to the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), the industry organization tasked with developing standards for systems management in enterprise IT deployments. If approved, the Oracle Cloud API may be further considered in DMTF’s proposed Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Cloud API standard.

“Enterprises are continuing to look to cloud computing to extend the value of their IT investments and better service users,” said Sushil Kumar, vice president, Oracle. “With the Oracle Cloud API, Oracle is further enabling customers and partners to build and manage cloud environments — based on an open, application-aware IaaS platform — to improve service levels and the overall end-user experience.”

Oracle says that its Oracle Cloud API specification is available on the Oracle Technology Network and that this technology encompasses the common elements that make up a cloud by specifying machines, storage volumes and networks. The specification submitted to the DMTF describes how a machine can be provisioned from an image; how a volume can be attached to a machine; and how a machine can connect to a network.

“DMTF is committed to enabling interoperable management of IT systems worldwide by bringing the IT industry together to collaborate on the development, validation and promotion of systems management standards,” said Mike Baskey, DMTF chairman. “As the use of cloud environments accelerates, the industry needs to consolidate on a set of accepted standards. Contributions like the Oracle Cloud Elemental Model subset of the API will help speed development and adoption of cloud-related standards.”

By leveraging virtualization, clustering, and dynamic provisioning across all layers of the stack, the company claims that the Oracle Cloud API will help ensure that users can manage their cloud-based resources to achieve flexibility and a high utilization ratio across the IT stack.

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